While US Senator Lincoln Chafee hailed his decisive GOP primary win as a referendum on his honesty, thoughtfulness, and independence, he certainly benefited from his incumbency and the massive support of the national Republican Party, both in terms of campaign cash and the dispatch to Rhode Island of a fleet of boosters to propel the record-setting vote.

Chafee attributed his 54-46 percent victory over Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey to “a grassroots effort like Rhode Island has never seen,” and it’s clear that backing from independents and disaffiliated Democrats fueled the tally of roughly 65,000 votes, 20,000 more than had ever been cast in a GOP primary in the state.

Laffey, the stylistic victor in two televised debates, seemed to have seized the momentum in the waning weeks of the primary, aided all along by Rhode Island’s tiny faction of conservative Republicans and his backers at the Club for Growth. Ultimately, though, the staying power of the Chafee name, combined with the resources of the national GOP, proved too much for the hard-charging challenger. It’s all the more striking considering Laffey’s more muscular persona, his vastly superior skill at retail politics, his sharper knack for crafting his image, and the way in which his message often seemed more focused than Chafee’s.

Although the senator’s campaign went negative early, sometimes with questionable tactics — such as faulting Laffey for raising taxes in Cranston, something that many voters would consider justified, given the city’s dire fiscal situation at the time — this seems to have succeeded in raising doubts about Laffey’s suitability as a senator.

In the end, Chafee savored his surprisingly large margin of victory on Tuesday night, flashing a broad grin from the ballroom stage on the 17th-floor of the Providence Biltmore and displaying the kind of self-ease rarely seen during his bitter primary battle with the irrepressible conservative challenger.

Many campaign observers, including myself, expected Chafee to eke out a win, and he acknowledged having harbored doubts about the outcome. “Sometimes over the last few weeks, I’d get a little down,” he said, surrounding by his wife Stephanie, their children, and other family members, “but my son Caleb would come up to me and say, ‘Are you pumped?’ ” Gesturing toward the ecstatic audience of hundreds of supporters, Chafee flashed a broad smile and asked, “Are you pumped? Are you pumped? On to victory!”

Chafee spoke not long after a stunned-looking Laffey, whose image was broadcast into the Biltmore ballroom on several television screens, conceded the primary election at around 10:40 pm. The results steadily trended toward the 54-46 percent outcome throughout the night, although Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, after offering an optimistic early update, tempered expectations by citing the need for results from the state’s second-largest city — where Chafee wound up besting Laffey by several thousand votes.

What the future holds for Laffey, the Cranston native who emerged from nowhere to become mayor and then shoot like a meteor across Rhode Island’s political landscape, remains to be seen. Given his penchant for invoking the likes of Ronald Reagan, who rose to the presidency after making waves as California’s governor, Laffey’s two terms at Cranston City Hall always seemed meant as the prelude for something bigger.

Chafee for governor? For now, Lincoln Chafee has the luxury of discussing his political future as a riddle wrapped up in an enigma.

Chafee emerges from geek status in TV debates with Laffey Viewing the two recent televised debates between US Senator Lincoln Chafee and his GOP challenger, Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey, was akin to taking a brisk 60-minute trip through psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grieving.

Down to the wire So will Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey prove the ascending dragon-slayer who knocks off US Senator Lincoln Chafee, a favorite target of conservatives everywhere, or will the herky-jerky heir to one of the best brand names in Ocean State politics repel his challenger and live to fight another day?

The national GOP could take some tips from Chafee Given Washington’s prevailing partisan gridlock in the late ’90s, George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign pledges — to be a uniter, not a divider, and to pursue a humble foreign policy — struck Lincoln Chafee as harbingers of something better.

Laffey attacks from the center When Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey announced last week that he didn’t even want the state Republican Party’s endorsement it marked a textbook move in the upstart’s stiff Republican primary challenge to US Senator Lincoln Chafee.

Advantage: Whitehouse It was just one more in a steady stream of campaign stops, efforts that might land Sheldon Whitehouse six months from now in the most exclusive club in the nation.

What’s next for Steve Laffey? Can you imagine Steve Laffey — a tireless self-promoter and all-around media hog — not returning a phone call from a reporter?

Mod on the move The Brown University class being taught this semester by Lincoln Chafee, the Republican US senator-turned-independent supporter of Barack Obama, has an up-to-the-moment title: “Whither America.”

Endorsements The Republican primary for US Senate is, in many ways, a fight between the GOP of past and present.

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